30 Day Song Challenge 2011: Day Four

Queen’s Love of My Life – an absolutely fckn beautiful song (especially when performed live) that always makes me a bit weepy – in my mind, one of the finest songs ever written!

“Love of My Life” is a ballad from the album A Night at the Opera by English rock band Queen. This song was written about Mary Austin with whom Freddie had a long term relation in the early 1970s. A live release of the single reached number 1 in Argentina and Brazil, in 1979. The preceding track on the album, “The Prophet’s Song”, flows seamlessly into this song, although the two were never performed back to back live.

Freddie Mercury wrote it on the piano and guitar first, Brian May rearranged the song for acoustic 12-string guitar to facilitate live performances. May contributed occasional guitar phrases to the original recording and played the swooping harp glissandos by pasting together multiple takes of single chords. The song is a good example of Mercury’s familiarity with rubato phrasing, showcasing his classical piano influences, notably by Chopin and Beethoven.

With its similar lyrical theme, later single “These Are the Days of Our Lives” would hark back to “Love of My Life”, twice using the line “I still love you”. At the end of “These Are the Days of Our Lives”, Mercury simply speaks the words, as he would often do in live versions of “Love of My Life.”